[pacman-dev] Tar backend for local db

[Xyne]

Allan McRae wrote:

>This would also give another use for "pacman -D" - an option could be
>added to recreate the local db tarball - in case it became corrupt or
>the files were manually edited.

That would be an essential function as manual edits are quite common.


>The thing you are missing is EVERYTHING in pacman apart from the local
>db is in tar format.  The packages are tarballs, the sync dbs are
>tarballs.   We use a very good library for reading from tarballs without
>extracting them.

"We have a really shiny hammer and and a lot of nails, so we may as well just
use our shiny hammer on everything."

It makes sense that packages are tar archives. A package is a fixed set of
files arranged in a hierarchy. That's what tar was meant to store.

Databases on the other hand are different. You can argue it any which way you
want, but it's obvious that the multiple files/tarred archive approach was a
lazy shortcut to avoid a proper solution that would have required time to
implement, test and debug. At first Judd or whoever presumably just wanted to
get it working, and subsequent improvements were made on what was already
there. Now it's grandfathered in with all the emotional attachment and a proud
member of the "good enough" club, but that does not mean that it's optimal.

SQLite makes sense for both sync and local databases. I expect it would be
faster and more versatile. The data would be stored in a common data format and
not require custom files and parsers. It would facilitate the creation of
third-party tools.

Is this a big deal? No. As stated, the current solution is already "good
enough". Further improvements will be welcomed, but there must come a point
where you ask  yourself if complicating an existing suboptimal solution to shave
off a few seconds is really better than implementing a proper solution to the
problem. Eventually you will want a proper solution, and then the current
effort will be at least partially wasted.


All that aside, +1 for tarring the local db to improve speed, as long as the
local files remain easily accessible for manual editing.

Regards,
Xyne